


Notecards and Nightcaps

by Nyxelestia



Series: PrEHAS [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: But it doesn't go anywhere, Depression, Discussion of Consent Issues, Drinking, Drunk Kissing, Drunk Sex, F/M, Gen, Nightmares, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Underage Drinking, but not really, friendship fic, pre-Stydia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 15:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4396841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxelestia/pseuds/Nyxelestia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene that takes place between 3A and 3B.</p><p>
  <i>Stiles stared at the bottle, knowing it was a bad idea. It was such a bad idea, on so many, many levels.</i>
</p><p><i>But it sounded so nice. The only other bottle of alcohol Stiles really had access to was Dad’s whiskey, and he watched the levels of booze in it like a hawk – at least when Stiles wasn’t the one pouring drinks for him, and holy god, he was a terrible, </i>terrible<i> son who once got his alcoholic father drunk just to get some information.</i></p><p>
  <i>Self-medication was such a terrible idea, but Stiles…he just wanted to sleep.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Think it’ll go with the pasta?” he said, and Lydia smiled with forlorn eyes.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Notecards and Nightcaps

**Author's Note:**

> This is originally going to be part of a larger fic, but worked well as a stand-alone so I'm posting it here. "Missing Scene" between 3A and 3B. All you really need to know for the purposes of this fic is that Stiles is thinking of taking up magic/studying as an Emissary.

Stiles wasn’t surprised to see Lydia on his doorstep. What he _was_ surprised to see was the fashionable duffle-bag hanging off one shoulder, messenger bag off the other.

“Hello,” she said, gripping the strap of her bag. “Is your father going to object to me spending the night?”

“Uh…I don’t think he would…?” Stiles said, just as Dad appeared behind him.

“Hi, Sheriff!” she greeted primly. “Would you mind if I spend the night here?”

Dad smiled softly at her, before looking speculatively between the two of them. “Sure,” he said. “Guest room may be a little dusty, though.” Was it just Stiles or did he say that a little pointedly?

“No problem,” she said, sauntering in past Stiles. Why does he know so many girls who saunter?

Shaking his head to himself as she toed off her shoes, he shut the door and turned to Lydia. “Should I just assume you have something planned for tonight, besides randomly barging into my house for a sleepover?”

He hoped his smile belied the caustic words, and based on her own smirk, it did. She reached into her bag and pulled out a copy of _The Cosmos_ , page-flags sticking out in all directions.

“What do you think?” she asked. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, Stilinski.”

Stiles stared at her incredulously. “You’re…you’re kidding, right?”

She grabbed his hand and dragged him up the stairs to his room. As they went, Stiles saw Dad raising a very bemused eyebrow while completely ignoring Stiles’ Gaze of Woe, before the staircase cut off his line of sight.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said about transfer of energy,” she said, setting the book on his desk and pulling out a few more books on a variety of topics – quantum physics, thermodynamics, kinetic force – and all of them with page-flags sticking out the side.

“And you completely ignored the part where I said I’m not sure I want to even go down that path?” Stiles offered, falling back on his bed and trying not to be mesmerized by the way her French braid nearly glowed in the setting sunlight.

She paused in pulling out another book, something chemistry-looking. Slowly, she set it down on top of the pile, then rooted around her bag a bit more to pull out a binder, spin-tossing it at him so he barely caught it. The binder-cover was a print out, a blank white page with a single, 100pt Times New Roman word in the middle:

_BANSHEES_

He opened it up to see what must have been at least a hundred pages of print-outs, with yet more page flags and sticky notes, and index cards in the pockets.

“Self-actualization,” Lydia said, and Stiles turned to see her pulling a notebook out, setting in on top of the pile of science books. “I want to learn more about myself – what I can do, what it means that I…” She straightened out the pile of books and notebook. “That I’m permanently connected to death like this.”

At the watery sound of her voice, Stiles shoved aside the binder and stood to wrap his arms around her, pulling her close and holding her tight as she returned the embrace.

This seemed to keep happening to them, and in his room again, no less.

Granted, she wasn’t crying, this time – though whether that was because she was all cried out or didn’t want to start in the first place or just didn’t want to mess up her make-up, Stiles didn’t know, and for her sake, he didn’t care. He just let her bury her face into his neck as he rubbed his hands up and down her back, while she clenched hers in his shirt, breath hitching on dry sobs and wet murmurs of _just have to do something_ and _need to know more_ and _sick of being helpless_.

He noticed a drop on her shoulder, and another one appear as he looked down, and he realized with a start that he _was_ crying.

“I wish I could say it was all going to get better,” Stiles muttered, thinking of his latest nightmare. “It’s just – I don’t know. But I still think we’ll be okay in the end.”

“You call all this okay?” she asked, leaning her head back without leaving his embrace.

“No,” he admitted. “But I think we’re getting there. And-” He took a deep breath, and looked at the pile of books. “Even if everything else won’t get better – we will.”

She sniffed and pressed her face into his chest again, and Stiles didn’t bother trying to hold back the tears. If Lydia couldn’t cry, then he would cry for both of them.

He didn’t know how long they stood there like that. He knew that at some point, his dad appeared in the doorway, ready to ask something only to see them and promptly back away. He knew his feet and throat started to hurt, and that his tears eventually dried up. And he knew it wasn’t until after sunset that she finally pulled away, poking and pinching at her eyelashes like she had to make sure her mascara was still perfect.

“I hate crying,” she said, turning away from him and fussing over his lamp. “Not a word about it, Stiles.”

He smiled, sitting on the bed and patting the space on the bed beside him. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

She wiggled the Cosmos out from under the pile of books, pulled her laptop from out of the bag, and grabbed his from off the desk, bringing all three with her to the bed. Instead of sitting on the edge, though, she peeled her socks off, tossing them in the direction of his chair, and crawled right over him so she was laying on the bed along the wall, pulling up a pillow so she could stay upright as she leaned back.

“I wasn’t kidding about those ideas,” she said hoarsely. “If your magic is just about manipulating the balance of nature, then we’ve got a lot of nature to cover.”

“Nature?” he asked dubiously, shifting until he was laying and leaning back alongside her, opening up his laptop while looking pointedly at the star-covered book.

“The Universe is nature,” she said. “The stars, werewolves, Nemetons, banshees, the galaxies, string theory, biology, chemistry, astrophysics – all of that is nature. The question is, how much of that nature is relevant to you. I say we start with conservation of energy, because that’s where you’ll usually find the most issues with ‘the balance’…”

It was easy, so easy, to get lost in science with Lydia. He could never truly forget how smart she was, but just when it would start to slip to the back of his mind, she would do something like this to remind him.

Between the two of them, they went through almost two packs of index cards, Stiles pinning them up on his walls and connecting strings between them for ideas, while Lydia cleared out part of the floor to start laying them out in meticulous piles and patterns. Both of them liked having something tangible to work with when studying and researching, but where Stiles liked things to stay mostly in one place while he made connections between them, Lydia liked her things to move around so she could connect them to each other directly.

Dad checked in on them twice – the first time, he seemed just amused when he saw them lying in bed together, both on their laptops and with papers and index cards and books strewn around them. The second time, he was in uniform, staring at all the papers and cards in bewilderment.

“There’s pasta on the stove,” he said, looking between everything like he was trying to figure it out, only to go cross-eyed and shake his head. “You kids going to be all right?”

“Yes, Sheriff,” Lydia said from the floor, stopping her re-piling of papers on the floor and sitting back on her heels to look up at the man directly. “Thank you for letting me stay over.”

“No problem,” he said. He looked at Stiles, who was standing on his bed with three notecards between his fingers, some string wrapped around his arm, and a stapler hanging limply from his fingers as he turned to look at his dad. “Be a good host, okay?”

“You bet,” Stiles said, saluting with the stapler. “Stay safe, okay?”

At that, his dad stepped into the room, carefully making his way around all the research on the floor, and Stiles turned on the spot to reach out and hug his dad.

He would be honest, for all that the last few weeks have been so terrible, Stiles was definitely grateful to be able to hug his dad as much as he wanted without questions. Dad was more than happy to return all the embraces, clearly wanting to feel his son safe and sound in his arms as much as Stiles needed the same.

It was a brief hug, but a strong one, then Dad turned to Lydia, who was smiling and looking a little lost between the two of them. He clapped a paternal hand on her shoulder and carefully made his way out of the room again, saying over his shoulder, “Try not to get too many papercuts,” before he disappeared down the hall.

For a moment, Stiles looked out the door after his dad, heart buzzing with age-old fear for the danger of the job, compounded by his knowledge of the supernatural and now burning bright with the recent kidnapping. Then he turned to see Lydia smiling sadly at him.

“Every cloud has a silver lining,” she said, before turning her attention back to her notecards, checking one of them against one of the print-outs from her Banshee Binder.

“Yeah,” Stiles said, turning and going back to pinning notecards to his wall.

“You don’t sound that happy about it,” he heard from behind him.

“I am,” Stiles said, pausing a moment to hold the pins between his teeth as he put up the notecards, carefully wrapping the string around the little bolt of plastic as he pushed it in. “I just – why did it have to take so much… _this_ …for us to get like this again?”

“People have always come closer in times of strife,” Lydia pointed out.

“I know, just – it kills me that it took strife in the first place to bring us together again, let alone so much of it,” Stiles said. “And I just – he’s already…did you see the kitchen table on your way up?”

“I saw it was covered in papers…?” she said, eyes begging him to get to his point.

“Old cases,” Stiles said. “He’s looking through them, and I know he’s looking for…he’s beating himself up for not knowing any of this sooner, and he doesn’t say it but I think he resents me for not telling him sooner, like maybe another case or two in the last year could have been solved if he’d known. And…” He shook his head, legs buckling so he fell cross-legged onto the bed. “Just the process of telling him…I saw him cry more in one night than in all the years since my mom died.”

He looked up to see Lydia sitting back on her heels again, notecards and papers forgotten by her side as she looked at him.

“The look in his eyes when he found out I’d been _kidnapped_ and tortured by Gerard and he’d never known about it…” Stiles was pretty sure Lydia had a concerned look on her face, but it was hard to tell with the tears building up in his own eyes. “I’m the terrible son, here, but he thinks he’s a bad father and I don’t – I don’t know how to fix this.” He sucked in a sharp breath and scrubbed at his eyes.

He felt her arms wrap tightly around him.

“You aren’t a bad son,” she said sternly. “You were trying to protect him-”

“And look at how well that turned out!” Stiles snapped. She jerked, and Stiles swallowed. “Crap, I’m sorry, I-”

She put a finger to his lips, and he obligingly fell silent, momentarily going cross-eyed trying to look down at her fingertip before focusing on Lydia.

“I’m not going to be able to convince you tonight, so I’m not even going to try,” she said. “But remember when you told me we would get better? It doesn’t just have to be about magic or powers. It can be the kind of people we are, too. I think you were a good son – but if you want to be a better one, then you can be. Capiche?”

After a moment, Stiles slowly nodded. She smiled with bittersweet smugness as she lifted her finger off of his lips, kissing him on the cheek before turning her attention back to her system of notecards.

“I can…I can do that,” Stiles said finally. “I just have to…do some things…”

“Make a list,” Lydia said, searching around for a blank notecard. “That’s what I do.”

“I list, right, um. Told him the truth, and that’s number one and already done,” Stiles said, legs bouncing as he fiddled around with the stapler.

“See?” Lydia said, pausing in her search to give him an encouraging smile over her shoulder. “You’re already making progress.”

Stiles snorted. “Well, number two I guess is make sure my dad doesn’t work himself to death on his old cases? Or the new ones. And I need to keep the house clean. I’ve been dropping the ball on that, lately, and I need to step up my game. Uh, been dropping the ball on keeping an eye on my dad, too, his diet and exercise and stuff-”

“Which would go right into keeping an eye on your dad,” Lydia said, sounding oddly hesitant. “Consolidation of tasks, Stilinski.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles agreed absently. “Anyway, make sure Dad doesn’t work himself to death, keep the house clean, keep an eye on my dad…especially with his shoulder, I gotta make sure he doesn’t make it worse. And, um, maybe I should see if I can pick up some more hours with Deaton or something so my dad has an easier time with the bills, at least pay for all of my own gas and stuff, maybe tutoring or selling essays again. And, crap, I need to find a way to protect the house, make wards or something, and I need to-”

“Stiles!”

He jerked and flailed back on his bed a little at Lydia’s sharp voice.

“What?”

“I don’t think you need to do all of that,” she said slowly. “It seems…excessive.”

“Since when do we do anything by halves?” Stiles said wanly, then shook his head to himself. “I’m gonna need more notecards-”

“What you need is to remember that you need to sleep,” Lydia said.

Stiles gave her a look just as she realized the ridiculousness of what she said.

He already wasn’t sleeping, anyway. Might as well be productive with his extra time awake.

But this wasn’t something that could be done right now.

Instead, he took a deep breath and said, “Pasta, then?”

“Sure,” she said, not moving her critical gaze from Stiles’ restless hands.

Stiles took a good look at her, trying to appraise her make-up, and said, “Do you think you’ll sleep tonight? I can start getting the guest bedroom ready.”

Lydia shut her eyes. “I don’t…sometimes, I’d give anything to sleep, but other times, I’d do anything to stay awake.”

Stiles nodded in sympathy. “Nightmares?”

“Among other things,” she muttered. “I even-” She laughed bitterly, then got up off the bed. She opened her duffel-bag and rooted around inside of it for a minute, before pulling out a bottle.

A bottle of cognac. About half-full and looking expensive as hell, Stiles raised his eyebrows as she held it up to him.

“I thought for once, we could have something nice,” she said.

Stiles stared at the bottle, knowing it was a bad idea. It was such a bad idea, on so many, many levels.

But it sounded so nice. The only other bottle of alcohol Stiles really had access to was Dad’s whiskey, and he watched the levels of booze in it like a hawk – at least when Stiles wasn’t the one pouring drinks for him, and holy god, he was a terrible, _terrible_ son who once got his alcoholic father drunk just to get some information.

Self-medication was such a terrible idea, but Stiles…he just wanted to sleep.

“Think it’ll go with the pasta?” he said, and Lydia smiled with forlorn eyes.

~*~

As it turned out, cognac and cheese ravioli were not the best pairing, but that didn’t stop them. Stiles reheated the pasta as Lydia connected her laptop to the TV in the living room. Dishing out dinner and pouring the booze, he felt surprisingly…grown up.

Figures, that dinner and a drink would feel more grown-up than facing down murderers, serial killers, and homicidal maniacs – all in one night, less than a day after he died. But somehow, dinner and drinks just felt like something only adults did, but facing down crazy killers was something anybody could do.

Holy god, his life was so messed up. And his perspectives.

He spared a moment to stare at the tray with the two plates and two glasses of cognac, and decided to leave the actual bottle in the kitchen as he took the arrangement to the living. One friendly debate about which Cosmos to watch later, and they were both settled into their meal, contentedly watching in silence.

“You know,” Stiles said, halfway through their meal. “I used to dream about this.”

He waved his fork between them on the ends of the couch, their plates and drinks on the coffee table as they watched Neil DeGrasse Tyson explain temporal mechanics on the TV.

“Dinner and a movie?” she asked sardonically.

“No,” Stiles said. “Well, yes, but this too. Just, like, chilling out together and stuff.”

She smiled. “I won’t lie and say I did too, but I always hoped for things like this. Having – having a friend I could talk science with and hang out with… my whole life, those were two separate activities with two separate groups for me, and that was if I ever even _had_ someone to talk to about applied mathematics or quantum physics.” Taking another bite of her ravioli and leaning back, she chewed and swallowed thoughtfully. “In hindsight, this is probably why I should’ve known me and Jackson were never going to work out.”

Stiles blinked in surprise. “Because he doesn’t know physics?”

“No, because – we were friends, first,” she said. “For the longest time. But somehow…I could never see us just hanging out like this once we were dating. If we were dating, it was always sex and dates and romance, but not just hanging out together, not anymore. It had to be one or the other with us, and sex and romance on their own are just not sustainable.” She shifted on the couch, bringing her legs up curl them under her. “I would be lying in bed with him and missing him, Stiles, it was bad.”

As disturbing as that mental image was, it also made perfect sense. “Figures.”

They ended up watching the rest of the episode in silence, and then another one. Lydia disconnected her laptop as Stiles washed the plates, the glasses and bottle going back upstairs with them. Lydia followed a moment later, bearing two of the water bottles from the fridge.

“Drink,” she said, handing him one. The look on her face brooked no argument, and Stiles didn’t even try, merely taking it, twisting open the cap without looking at it, and draining half the bottle in one go, eyebrows raised in challenge.

She rolled her eyes as she sipped at her own water while kneeling on the floor again. “You’ll thank me in the morning.”

“I know,” Stiles said with a forlorn sigh.

Rather than picking up their research threads, Lydia started picking up her notecards, using post-it notes and paperclips in some system incomprehensible even to Stiles to know where to put them when she laid them out next. Stiles pinned up the rest of his print outs as a wave of fuzzy creeped through his brain, and then poured them both another glass of cognac each.

“To bad ideas,” Stiles toasted, clinking his glass against hers before drinking. He didn’t drain the whole glass in one solid go, but he did finish it quickly, setting it down on his desk only when it was empty. “Get ready for bed?”

They did. Stiles took the first shower, since knew he’d be quick about it, and had barely dressed in his usual sleep pants and tee-shirt when Lydia monopolized the bathroom. Then he re-did some of his research pins, sipping at the rest of his water while he sorted out his piles of paper and organized the books on his table. By the time she came out in her overlarge tee-shirt and some shorts – thank god it wasn’t a silk nightie – he’d even taken out the trash from his little wastebasket and resorted an entire shelf of his bookcase.

He felt cotton-headed enough to double-check everything he did as he was doing it, but not enough to think he’d need to redo it in the morning.

Pulling her hair out of a ponytail to let it fall around her shoulders, Lydia set her bathroom bag down on top of her duffel and poured them both another glass of cognac without saying a word.

Drinking the glass – his third for the night – was still a bad idea. Whatever, they had carbs for dinner. The part of his brain that reminded him that food and alcohol digestion weren’t affected by each other could just shut up.

It was only after draining the glass that Stiles took a close look at the inside of the bottle. “Not much left,” he said. “I feel like I wasted it, somehow.”

Lydia blinked in surprise as she set down her empty glass by the nearly-empty bottle. “You don’t…don’t you like it?”

“I do!” Stiles said. “Just-” He took a deep breath. “Something my dad said – you should never drink yourself to bed, because it’s a waste of good drink.” He paused. “Well, that and because it’s almost a surefire way to alcoholism, but still – just drinking and then going to bed…”

She stood by the desk, her hip pressed against it for balance. The way the room was swaying around him, Stiles was impressed she was still standing so straight when he wasn’t entirely certain how upright he was sitting on the edge of his bed.

“Have you been getting much sleep lately?” she challenged. “If this helps us sleep well, I won’t call that a waste at all.”

“Is boozing ourselves up just to get a good night’s sleep really worth it?” Stiles said. “I mean – I feel guilty, but I also really don’t want to know how much that bottle cost.”

“You don’t,” she agreed. “And yes, it’s worth it – not regularly or even often, but one night, when we’re both just a little desperate for some sleep or to feel good again? Hell yes, it’s worth it.” She smiled. “After everything we’ve been through, I think we deserve some nice things.”

Stiles stared at the floor, thinking about all the lies he told his father, the time he got his own dad drunk just for information, that time he advocated killing Jackson, and enjoying handcuffing Scott to the radiator, and nearly abandoning Derek and taking so long to find Erica and Boyd and letting his dad get kidnapped and forgetting so many chores and his grades dropping and losing sight of his dad’s diet and exercise, and getting his dad kidnapped-

“You definitely do,” Stiles said. _Me, not so much._

But god, feeling the way he did now, he could see why his dad always kept a bottle of whiskey in the house. Granted, he could also see why it was only ever _one_ bottle, but Stiles didn’t really care about that part right now.

“You do, too,” she said, looking at him critically before she poured the last of the cognac out between the two glasses, barely getting them to two-thirds full once she finished it. She handed him the glass, and held hers up in a wobbly toast. “But to becoming better, anyway.”

“To becoming better,” Stiles said, clinking his glass against hers.

This time, he did drink it all in one go.

So did she.

Lydia set the empty glasses down next to the empty bottle, and fell onto the bed beside Stiles, leaning back on her arms and shutting her eyes, head waving to a tune he couldn’t hear. Stiles got up to turn off his lamp, and it felt like a blanket of darkness settled over his room as he came back to bed, laying down beside Lydia.

“It’s been a long time since I felt this…okay,” she said, opening her eyes and giving him a dopey smile. “You know, first day, I was joking about all the new boys in school with Allison. She was trying to tell me how I didn’t have to be dating a boy or that I didn’t need a guy or have to be in a relationship, and I just – that wasn’t what it was about, you know?”

“Not exactly,” Stiles said, also leaning back and bumping his shoulder into hers. “What was it about?”

“A distraction.”

Something about the tone of her voice made him turn and look at her, notice the intent way she was staring at him, her eyes roving over his face.

For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

When he did, it took two tries for him to be able to form the words, “Do you want me to distract you?”

Instead of answering, she lifted her arm, reached over to his neck, and pulled him in to kiss her.

It was everything and nothing like he always imagined it would be, moving his mouth against hers. He reached up and threaded his fingers through her hair, wrapping his hand around the back of her bed as he felt himself shake, unbalanced on one arm holding him up. He slowly moved his hand down her neck, her shoulder, her back and to her hip, gripping it and tugging at it, pulling her closer to him.

He’d planned to try and pull her on top of him, but she had plans of her own, breaking away from him to move her way up his bed, and Stiles lost a moment in the smooth skin of her shoulder peeking out from her giant shirt and suddenly she was tugging on his shoulder again, pulling him towards her.

Her hair fanned out around her head as she lay back on his pillow, pulling him on top of her, and Stiles braced his arms around her, his weight balanced between them and where his hips were pressing against hers as he pressed his mouth to hers again, letting his entire body roll against hers.

Stiles prayed that the haze of the drink wouldn’t make him forget even a moment of this, the taste of minty toothpaste and cognac from the kisses and the warmth of her skin against his, the softness of her flesh against the hardness of her grip.

He refused to forget a moment of this, a moment of getting with a girl he’d loved for so long that he fell _out_ of love with her, of finally feeling good again, of finally losing his virginity-

Finally.

That was not something he should be thinking when he was in bed with someone, let alone the former girl of his dreams.

It took everything he had, and two more kisses and lifting his hips up from hers, but Stiles eventually had to say, “Stop-” Another kiss. “No, Lydia, _Lydia_ – stop, we have to…”

He pulled away, pushing himself up again, his weight balanced between his elbows and his knees so none of him was touching her, except for their ankles brushing together.

She chased his mouth for a moment, before registering what he said and falling back against the pillow in surprise. Blinking with dazed, wide eyes, and mouth flushed red from the kissing, Stiles was pretty sure some part of him died by not leaning back down to keep kissing her.

As it was, he dropped his head a little so he could look away, his forehead brushing against her chin. Granted, it just meant he got the perfect view to see that she wasn’t wearing any kind of bra at all to sleep, but it was still easier than looking directly at her, right now.

“You really want to stop?” Lydia asked in surprise.

Stiles sighed down her cleavage. “No. But I know I’m a little messed up in the head right now, and I don’t know if I’d be doing this because I like you and we can enjoy it, or if I’m just using you.”

Lydia laughed, somewhere between harsh and hysterical.

“Aren’t we using each other?”

Stiles swallowed, pushing himself off of her and falling down into a heap beside her. She turned so they were facing each other, and Stiles grabbed her hand. He brought their joined hands up to kiss her knuckles, then rested them in the meager space between their chests.

“That’s not a good thing, Lydia,” Stiles murmured, words slurred due to his face smushing into the pillow. “That’s…” He took a deep breath. “We’re both really drunk, and depressed, and I don’t know about you but I’m already having trouble staying conscious.”

Lydia looked ready to cry as she pulled her hand out of Stiles’ grasp to stroke at his hair. “I’m starting to remember why I keep going after the bad boys, even with good men all around me.”

Stiles laughed a little, honestly amused. “I’m not sure I’m a good guy.”

“You’re good enough,” Lydia said. Her expression turned sad as she brought her hand down to his again. “You’ve got the girl of your dreams in your bed and willing to sleep with you, and you turn her down because you know it will only make things worse.”

Stiles bit his lip. “I’m kind of messed up, and you said it yourself, Lydia – separating sex and romance from friendship…maybe that was just you and Jackson, but if it’s not, then I don’t want to lose what we already have.”

Lydia considered him with a long, low-lidded look, before leaning in and kissing him one more time – one _last_ time.

“You have no idea how much it pains me to say this,” she said when she pulled away. “But you’re right.” She paused. “But we are still cuddling, right?”

Stiles smiled, lips quirking upward in sheer sadness. “Yeah. Big spoon or little spoon?”

She rolled her eyes as she laid back, pulling Stiles’ on top of her chest.

“…the fact that I’m not even getting a hard-on right now is probably proof that ‘distracting’ you wouldn’t have gone well,” Stiles said, snuggling down into her still-lovely bosom and wrapping his arms around her. She, in turn, wrapped her arms around him. “But you still have an awesome rack, promise.”

Lydia laughed, hugging him tighter and pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “Good night, Stilinski.”

“Good night, Martin.”

~*~

When John came home, he went through his usual post-night-shift routine. Pull off his shoes by the door, put the little odds and ends from his pockets in the bowl, go start the coffee maker. He’d drawn comfort from this routine for years.

The newest addition to his routine, though, was a mixed bag.

It killed him to know what Stiles had gone through under his nose, and the nightmares over the last few weeks were just a twist to the knife of all the things John was learning about his son. Yet the fact Stiles didn’t find the extra hugs and phone calls and late-night check-ins was a relief. Most teenagers barely tolerated any of those things, yet Stiles was encouraging it. __

As often as not, Stiles was already awake in the morning when John came home from a night shift. Sometimes, it was because he’d never gone to bed in the first place, and sometimes it was because he’d woken up from terrible nightmares. But he was there, safe and sound and whole, and given everything Stiles had been through, John realized there wasn’t much more he could truly ask for.

Still, he wasn’t prepared to walk into his son’s room to see he wasn’t alone in bed.

“Really?” he muttered to himself, raising an eye at the bed in amusement when he saw Lydia Martin in bed with Stiles.

He smiled for a moment, getting ready to wake his son up and embarrass him for letting his dad see him in bed with a girl, before realizing that he really was just in bed with the girl.

And from the looks of it, that was it.

They were both clothed, and in _pajamas_ no less, and there was no evidence of any horsing around – and John literally went to school to look for these things.

On their sides and with their backs to the door, with Lydia wrapped around Stiles’ back, John could see that they were both fully clothed and relatively well put-together, at least as much as one could be after a night of sleep. They were both breathing evenly, Stiles’ feet poking out from the blanket like he was a kid again, Lydia’s hair nearly shining in the faint sunlight that managed to leak in through the blinds.

They didn’t even have any hickeys, for god’s sake.

For a brief moment, he tried to puzzle it out, before Stiles whimpered from where he was wrapped in Lydia’s arms, and John sighed, slumping against the doorjamb. Even wrapped in the arms of the girl of his dreams, Stiles was still having nightmares – and judging by the bags under her eyes, Lydia has been having some sleep trouble, too.

He was about to turn away, slip out quietly and interrogate them later, when he caught sight of two glasses on the desk, with a bottle between them.

A cognac bottle.

An _empty_ cognac bottle.

Swallowing, John slowly stepped into the room, reaching down and picking it up as carefully as possible, the glass glinting in the sunlight as he turned it over to look at the label. It wasn’t a particularly _big_ bottle, and he had no idea how much was in it before, but with the high proof and at their age…

He looked around, noticing a pile of notecards that appeared to be covered in Lydia’s writing. The wall was still covered in print-outs, scientific equations mixed in with mystical diagrams – all of it equally esoteric for John. The desk was covered in more papers, charts and mathematical proofs and a book on chemistry that didn’t look like anything the local _college_ would assign, let alone the high-school.

A feminine duffle-bag rested in the chair, with a purse and open toiletry tote hanging off the arms. The messenger bag hanging off the chair contained a laptop, a binder filled with a variety of different types of paper, and two more books.

Any other time, and John’s first assumption would be that Stiles and the girl he had in his bed pretended to study, got a little tipsy instead, and ended up horsing around.

But it wasn’t any other time. It was here and now, two kids traumatized by kidnapping and assault and attempted _murder_ , two kids who’d gone through hell and back without John or the girl’s own parents ever knowing.

It looked like they actually studied – something _not_ for school, no less – then ‘medicated’ themselves to sleep.

While it was a joint effort, John only knew his own history with alcohol – and how much of Stiles had been witness to.

John never hated his own drinking habits more than he did right then.

Gripping the bottleneck, he continued staring at the two teenagers in the increasingly brighter room, Lydia’s own face starting to look a little distressed even as Stiles at least calmed down a little. Barely keeping his breathing under control, John fought down the strong urge to cry.

He’d been fighting that urge a lot, lately – and he wasn’t always winning.

Finally, he turned on his heel and slipped out as quietly as he came in – this time taking the bottle with him.

Downstairs, he pulled the case files into a neat pile to take to his desk and set the bottle right in the middle of the clear side. It would be the first thing Stiles and Lydia saw when they came downstairs.

After taking the case files to his office, he got out the pancake mix and eggs to make breakfast for the kids, and set an alarm on his phone in case he needed to wake them up.

Unsurprisingly, he didn’t. He heard an achingly familiar shout of Stiles waking up from a nightmare, and John nearly went upstairs again, but when he heard nothing else, he realized Lydia had it in hand. Over the sounds of his cooking, he could hear the opening and closing of bathroom doors upstairs, some unsettled footsteps, and even a pair of murmured voices at some point.

He forced himself to stay focused on the food, making it as meticulously and carefully as possible, and pouring out giant glasses of orange juice alongside the coffee for the two of them. They still had to go to school – what the hell were they thinking, drinking on a school night? – and while normally, John would love nothing more than to induce misery in a hangover as an object lesson, today wasn’t the day to do that.

These kids had been through enough as it was.

He was sitting at the table, reading the local newspaper, when the two teenagers came downstairs, both carrying schoolbags and Lydia bearing a duffel-bag.

They froze at the threshold of the kitchen, eying the bottle that sat in blatant accusation on the table.

“Stiles,” John greeted with a nod. “Lydia.”

“…good morning, Sheriff,” Lydia said finally. Stiles was still frozen.

“Have a seat, both of you.”

They shared a nervous look, but obliged, warily sitting down at the two places set out for them.

“You two look surprisingly ready for the day, given how much you drank,” John said. With the bottle sitting between the three of them, there was no sense beating around the bush. “Even accounting for how short hangovers are your age.”

“Hydration, Sheriff,” Lydia said. When he looked at her, she elaborated, “Most of a hangover is just a particular type of dehydration caused by excess alcohol consumption. As long as you hydrate in proportion to your alcohol consumption, a hangover can be avoided, especially if you have painkillers on hand the morning after.”

Of course it could be. And of course, these two kids – the smartest kids he’d ever known – would have planned this. Especially since…

“What the hell were you two thinking, drinking like this on a school night?” John demanded. “Drinking at _all_ on a school night? Drinking like this, period?”

They shared a look again over their untouched food, before Stiles finally spoke.

“We were hoping it would help us sleep,” he admitted quietly, voice sounding so _small_ in the kitchen, completely disproportionate to how much of John’s heart his words just carved right out.

Once upon a time, John would’ve given anything for his son to pipe down, and now that he finally had, John hated it.

“Did it?” John asked, despite already knowing the answer. Either they realized this, or they were just being honest with him, because both of them shook their heads.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose as they finally started to eat – and being teenagers who needed to get to school soon, they didn’t just eat, but they _dug in_. Teenagers. Teenagers and their hangover-proof metabolisms.

“Look,” he said. “I’m not telling you to never drink, because I remember how well that worked out when I was a teenager. I’m just…” God, John never even figured out how the hell to say this to his friends, his co-workers, or his deputies – how was he supposed to explain this to his own kid?

He didn’t have much a choice.

“You’re headed down a path that terrifies me,” he said finally, pointing at the bottle. “And it terrifies me because I’m constantly trying to run away in the opposite direction – and never quite managing it.”

Lydia seemed to almost pointedly keep eating, in stark contrast to Stiles who froze on the spot, staring at John in shock.

Yeah, it had been a long time since he admitted his drinking was a problem.

“I’m not saying ‘never drink’, because I was your age, once,” John said. “But I am saying, don’t use it as a coping method.”

“It’s not as if we just jumped into this,” Stiles said, looking up at John with hardened wet eyes. “We only tried this in the first place because we’re running out of ideas.”

John’s heart broke at the same time Stiles’ voice did.

“All I’m asking is that you find a better coping mechanism,” John said, reaching out to hold up the bottle. “Because this one? This will make you feel better for a while, and then it’ll destroy you…and it can destroy those around you, too. Of all people, I think I don’t need to tell you that.”

Lydia stared down sightlessly at her food – god, this must be so awkward for her, but John couldn’t back down, not on something like this. Stiles stared at the bottle, looking like it was taking everything he had not to cry.

It definitely took all of John’s reserves to keep his tears unshed when Stiles looked him in the eye.

“Do you have any ideas, then?” his boy asked quietly. “Do you have any ‘coping mechanisms’ that can help with multiple kidnappings, lethal arson, assaults _plural_ , three werewolf battles, two serial killers, and you nearly being murdered?”

The list of every hell Stiles has been through in the last year was the sound of John’s failure as a father – especially since he knew this was the condensed version.

Stiles stared at him, jaw set as Lydia tried to rub his shoulder comfortingly, and John wondered – yet again – how the hell his boy was even up and functioning after all of that, let alone getting ready to go to school. If it were John, he’s probably still be curled up under a mountain of blankets in bed.

Or drowning his sorrows in a bottle.

Christ.

Stiles sees the look on his face and abruptly, his expression fall apart. “Oh my god, Dad, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it like-”

“Don’t,” John said quietly, setting the bottle down. “Don’t ever – god, I’m not gonna lie, as sad as this makes me, I can’t even blame you two for this. The things you guys have been through – the fact that you’re still getting up and getting ready for school…” He got up, rounded the table, and pulled his surprised son out of his seat and into a hug, John wrapping himself around his boy as much as he could, like maybe if he tried just a little bit more, he could protect his son from every evil in the world. “Don’t ever apologize for any of that, because none of it was your fault. You kids are stronger than anyone will ever give you credit for, don’t ever forget that.”

He looked up to see Lydia staring at both of them with desperation and fondness, and he held out a hand for her to grab. “You too, Lydia – you’ve both been through so much, it amazes me that you’re still getting up out of bed, let alone going to school after a night like this.”

“Dad,” Stiles choked out, and if John’s heart shattering could have a sound, it would be that right there. “I don’t…I can’t…I just wanted to sleep, that’s all, I swear, I didn’t-”

“I believe you,” John shushed him with gently, his arm curling tighter around Stiles’ back, his hand gently rubbing up and down his shoulder. “I do. We’ll work this out, somehow, okay? Just please – don’t turn to a bottle for help again.”

“We won’t, Sheriff,” Lydia said. “It wasn’t – we know it’s not worth it. We just wanted one night…”

She trailed off, not elaborating, and John sighed, stepping back and waiting for his son to try to regain his dignity after letting a girl he has – had? – a crush on see him hugging and crying on his dad.

It was probably a testament to how much these kids have had to grow up over the last year that Stiles didn’t seem ashamed about it at all, instead taking his seat again as John did the same.

“Whatever it takes,” John said. “Therapy, medication, or even that meditative music the yoga-in-the-park ladies swear by, we’ll find something.”

He got two watery smiles for that.

“Thanks, Dad,” Stiles said, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. He glanced sidelong at Lydia, but ultimately seemed unconcerned by her seeing him in this state.

He supposed they’ve seen each other at much worse than this.

“Now finish your breakfast,” John said, straining for some semblance of normalcy. “And don’t be late for school.”

~*~

Stiles parked his jeep and cut the engine with almost ten minutes to spare in front of the school, and turned to Lydia in his passenger seat.

“How badly did we mess up, last night?” Stiles asked quietly.

“The drinking or the nearly screwing?” Lydia asked, fiddling with her duffel bag.

“Both,” Stiles said with a shrug, grabbing his own backpack from out of the back seat. “And what do you want to tell people?”

“Tell people?” she asked.

“I’m driving you to school, you have an overnight bag, we’re both exhausted…people are gonna talk,” Stiles said.

Lydia shrugged. “The truth – I slept over at your place. Not like it’s their business, anyway.”

“You know what people will say-”

“Do I look like I care about that?” she asked, stopping in her last-minute organizing over her bag to pin him with a haughty gaze. God, he’d missed that.

“You used to,” Stiles said. “You always care what people think of you.”

“I care that they think what I want them to think of me,” Lydia said, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she set down the duffel on the floor to double-check whatever she was looking for in her messenger bag. “But I’ve never tolerated slut-shaming before, and I’m not about to start now.”

She shouldered her messenger, looped the duffel straps around her elbow, and had a prim hand on the door-handle before she paused to turn back to him.

“You’re a dork, Stilinski, but you’re my dork and I’m not about to be ashamed of you.”

With that, she opened the door and stepped out of the car, Stiles doing the same and locking up his baby behind them. But before she could start moving towards the front door, he grabbed her elbow to hold her back just one more time.

“I only brought it up because I don’t want to see you dragged down or hurt by me,” he said.

She snorted. “As if sleeping with you would ever be enough to bring me down. I’m too smart and pretty for that.”

At hearing her old self start shining through in her words, Stiles slowly grinned as he let go of her arm.

“You most definitely are, Queen Martin,” he said.

She laughed, kissing his cheek – shocking at least two students milling around in front of the school who saw it – and strode off, weaving between cars without breaking her stride, as if they weren’t even there and she meant to go on that path all along.

With a sigh for what they had – and what they never will have, because they were just too far beyond it now – Stiles started moving, too.

Stiles wished he could keep his head up as high as hers, ignoring all the looks and muttering and badly-hidden pointing of fingers and even the occasional. But he wasn’t Lydia, or Allison, or Jackson or Scott or Isaac or any one of his friends who’ve had to deal with massive ups and downs in what their fellow classmates thought of them. He’d only ever had to deal with the constant, low-level derision, and this new attention…well, it was almost as bad as last year – except this time, he didn’t have Lydia paving the way for him, or Jackson suffering alongside him.

Just Lydia barging ahead on her own, while Stiles ducked his head and shuffled awkwardly towards his locker.

Unsurprisingly, just as he was finished organizing his books and notebooks for the day, Scott came up to his locker, a knowing smile on his face as he looked at Stiles’ neck.

“Have a good night?” he asked, as if he already knew the answer.

Scott was understandably surprised when Stiles’ shoulders slumped.

“Yes and no,” he said. “Me and Lydia had a nice time together. But it turns out drinking before bed doesn’t help with the nightmares.”

“Drinking before…” Scott’s amusement disappeared completely, replaced by worry. “What do you mean?”

“Just – she brought some cognac over, and we pretty much finished it off between us and made-out, and we got to second base – and it was awesome, really, even though it meant needing to change my pants in front of her after – but then…I still had nightmares.”

He looked up, and frowned in confusion when he saw the edges of Scott’s worry seem to bleed into saddened anger.

“You drank and went to bed?” Scott said incredulously. Stiles slowly nodded, only muttering _half a bottle_ , like that meant anything. “Dude! What made you think it was a good idea? That-”

“It wasn’t,” Stiles said. “And I know it wasn’t, you don’t have to tell me, I just – I just wanted to sleep.”

“And you thought drinking would be a way to do that?” Scott hissed, planting a hand on the locker next to Stiles, trapping him between Scott and his own locker door. “What the hell, man? Why would you do that? You don’t want to end up like our dads!”

That…that casual way of saying ‘our dads’. Like roping them together into some shared category beyond fatherhood and law enforcement made any kind of sense, as if they were even close to each other, as if-

“Don’t you dare compare my dad to yours!” Stiles snapped, turning and crossing his arms to glare at him. “I’m sorry your dad was such a prick when he was drunk, I really am, but don’t think for one second-”

“I’m not saying your dad was like mine,” Scott said, gritting his teeth like he was restraining himself. He probably was. “I’m saying both our dads had problems drinking and we can’t…we both have that in our blood, Stiles – we need to be careful and you know it.” He took a deep breath. “Besides – your dad may not have been like mine, but it’s not like you were _unscathed_ by his drinking, either.”

Stiles slammed his locker door shut, not caring at how Scott flinched, or at how many people around them were staring at Stiles in shock.

“Good SAT word,” Stiles sneered, turning to insert and clasp the lock shut. “But don’t ever say anything like that again.”

He waited for something else to enter into his brain to say, waited for Scott to latch onto his words and maybe tear at Stiles’ heart even more, bring up all the bad memories they shared between them sneaking into each other’s rooms over so many years and sharing secrets in the safety of the dark.

Somehow, though, he was unsurprised when Scott merely slumped against the lockers, looking so… _defeated_ – a worrying sight on a recently-turned Alpha, and a True Alpha at that.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “That wasn’t what I meant. I’m just…I’m not sleeping so great either, man, and I don’t want to see you hurt. Especially not by something so stupid and mundane, after everything else we’ve been through.”

Stiles pressed his forehead against the locker, then turned his head so his temple was stilled pressed up against it as he smiled wanly at Scott.

“I know you didn’t mean it like that, dude,” he said, pushing himself away from the locker so he and Scott could start walking down the hall towards their classes.

Scott bumped his shoulder against Stiles’, and Stiles bumped right back at him, and they smiled at each other like they always did. No matter what else, they were each other’s chosen brothers, and nothing else they said or did could change that.

“See you in History,” Stiles said as they approached Scott’s classroom. Scott reached over to give Stiles a brief, one-armed hug, before wordlessly heading into his class.

Stiles only had to go down two more rooms, stopping outside Latin when he saw Lydia standing there holding out her notebook as someone else quickly took pictures of her notes with his phone. As soon as he went inside, too, Stiles asked, “You get any problems so far?”

Lydia raised a single, well-shaped eyebrow at him, conveying wordlessly just how much of a stupid question that was.

Stiles smiled.

No matter how much darkness was in his heart now, there were always lights in his life to guide him out of it.

~*~

**Author's Note:**

> I would love to hear what you think of this ficlet. Let me know what parts you liked, what parts need improvement, etc. - every word you say helps me become a better writer, and I love hearing from you guys. ♥


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